December 2018 – Scienceandsf -A Blog Published by Robert A. Lawler

As NASA finalizes its plans for a return to the Moon is the Deep Space Gateway an unnecessary and costly complication?

This coming year, 2019 we will celebrate the 50th anniversary of Apollo 11, humanity’s first ever landing on the Moon, the first ever trip to another celestial body. It makes sense therefore to consider NASA’s current plans for manned exploration of space and in particular the current plans, now being finalized for a manned return to the Moon expected to occur in or about the year 2028.

Now when President John F. Kennedy first proposed going to the Moon all of the engineers at NASA, Werner von Braun for example, thought that they’d have to build a rocket big enough to put a spacecraft into orbit that would go directly to the surface of the Moon, land there and later blast off from the Moon to head straight back to Earth. The most simple, uncomplicated approach in other words. The problem was that such a rocket would have been so huge and expensive that it would make the Saturn V look puny in comparison. There were many at NASA who doubted that developing such a rocket was possible in Kennedy’s time frame.

It was Dr. John Houbolt, see image below, of NASA’s planning directorate who advocated for a different plan called ‘Lunar Orbit Rendezvous’ (LOR). In this idea two smaller spacecraft would be sent into orbit around the Moon. One would be a Command and Service Module (CSM) that would sustain the astronauts during their voyage while also having the rocket engine that would send the astronauts back toward Earth. Only the second module, a Lunar Module (LM) would actually set down on Moon. With this approach the size of the actual spacecraft that landed would be much smaller, see image below, and this would make every other component of the mission, all the way back to the big rocket that took off from Earth, much smaller and therefore cheaper as well.

John C. Houbolt Explaining Lunar Orbit Rendezvous (Credit: Public Domain)

Comparison of the Sizes of Lunar Landing Vehicles (Credit: Public Domain)

The problem with Lunar Orbit Rendezvous was the rendezvous part because once the astronauts had blasted back off from the Moon they would have to find and connect up with the CSM in order to get back home to Earth. The idea of two spacecraft in orbit around the Moon finding each other was scary, in 1960-62 no one knew if such a rendezvous was possible in Earth orbit let alone 400,000 km away in Lunar orbit.

Still it looked as if LOR was the only way to meet Kennedy’s deadline and NASA made it work. To the people back on Earth who watched the Apollo landings the astronauts made rendezvousing in lunar orbit seemed like a routine operation.

The Lunar Module in Lunar Orbit Preparing to Rendezvous with the Command and Service Modules (Credit:NASA)

So now NASA is planning to take us back to the Moon, again in about ten years time. This time they already have two major components of the Apollo missions designed, built and nearly ready to begin flight-testing. The Space Launch System (SLS) and Orion crew module, see images below, are obviously updated versions of the Saturn V rocket and Apollo CMS modules. So all that we need is a new, improved Lunar Module, like the one in the image below. Once we’ve developed that we’ll be ready to go right?

NASA’s Space Launch System (Credit: NASA)

Lockheed Martin’s Proposed Lunar Lander (Credit: Space News)

Not so fast, because you see NASA wants to build a space station in lunar orbit before going back down to the surface. This station is know as the Deep Space Gateway and is intended to serve as the rendezvous point for the Orion capsule and a proposed landing module. The Gateway is expected to cost about $20 billion to build and at least another $5 billion to assemble in lunar orbit. The image below shows the planned Deep Space Gateway.

NASA’s Proposed Deep Space Gateway (Credit: NASA)

Now since the Apollo astronauts demonstrated that they could rendezvous in lunar orbit without a station being there you might wonder if the Deep Space Gateway, and the $25 billion it will cost is really necessary, and you won’t be alone in asking that. In fact the National Space Council’s User’s Advisory Group has recommended that the money for Gateway be instead spent on accelerating the development of the lander which could enable NASA to put a man back on the Moon 4-5 years earlier.

So why would NASA want to spend $25 billion or more and delay getting back to the Moon by five years anyway. Well now remember its called the Deep Space Gateway not the Lunar Orbiting Station and it was originally intended to go into an extremely elongated orbit around both the Earth and Moon, an orbit that would take it as far as 5 million kilometers from Earth on voyages lasting a month or more.

In other words the Deep Space Gateway is a stepping-stone to an interplanetary spaceship, a step on the road to Mars. NASA hoped to use the Gateway as a test bed for learning how to operate with astronauts far beyond the Earth orbit for months at a time, experience they will need to begin planning for a manned trip to Mars, and they still hope to do by occasionally putting the Gateway in extremely elongated lunar orbits. In a sense NASA is using the Gateway in order to connect going back to the Moon with going on to Mars!

Personally I want NASA to just concentrate on one mission and get it done. In the past twenty years the ‘next stage of manned spaceflight’ has flipped back and forth from Mars to back to the Moon to an asteroid to back to the Moon. I say let’s just develop a lander and get back to the Moon for real and then think about something like the Deep Space Gateway.

Anyway that’s my opinion, what’s yours?

Eruption at Krakatoa causes Tsunami killing hundreds along coast of Indonesia. Is there more to come?

The island nation of Indonesia is generally considered to be the most volcanically active country in the world. Lying right on the so-called ‘Ring of Fire’ the nation is dotted with some 130 known active volcanoes. Probably the most famous of Indonesia’s volcanoes is Krakatao, a name that has almost become a byword for volcanic destruction. See image below.

Artist’s Impression of the 1883 Eruption of Krakatoa (Credit: Public Domain)

For thousands of years the Krakatoa volcano sat on a small, uninhabited island between the much larger, and heavily populated islands of Java and Sumatra, see image below. The volcano had a long recorded history of eruptions until during the night of 26-27 August of 1883 the Krakatoa volcano exploded with a force of about 200 megatons, four times that of the largest nuclear weapon ever tested. It is estimated that the eruption of 1883 ejected approximately 25 cubic kilometers of rock into the atmosphere destroying the island on which the volcano sat while generating a Tsunami that killed over 36,000 people along the coasts of Java and Sumatra.

Position of Krakatoa (Modern Anak Krakatoa) between Java and Sumatra (Credit: Google)

After that eruption Krakatoa was quiet for a few decades but starting in the 1920s the pressure began to build again and a new island, with a new volcano lifted itself out of the water. Named Anak Krakatoa or child of Krakatoa, see image below, the volcano has been growing steadily at a rate of 13 centimeters a week over the last few decades. The continuous activity of Krakatoa, and its potential to generate further natural disasters has alarmed both geologists and the Indonesian government.

Recent Eruptions of the Anak Krakatoa Volcano have triggered a tsunami spreading destruction across Indonesia (Credit: The Sun Daily)

Just this past week the seismic activity of Krakatoa has again proved deadly as new eruptions on the night of 22 December generated a Tsunami wave as high as 5 meters that struck several villages and tourist resorts on the western end of the island of Java. Unlike the Indonesian tsunami of 2004 that killed a quarter of a million people this tsunami does not appear to have been caused by an underwater earthquake but rather by a landslide of part of the volcano into the ocean, see image below.

Tsunami Caused by Landslide (Credit: University of California, Santa Cruz)

Now you might wonder what difference a landslide makes compares to an earthquake but it turns out that Indonesia’s tsunami warning system is designed to detect earthquakes and missed the landslide completely. Because of this there was absolutely no warning of the waves that have killed at least 400 and wounded several thousand. Another problem is that, since the island formed by Anak Krakatoa is so close to the Java shore even if the tsunami detection system had worked it would have only provided a minute or two of warning to the people in its deadly path.

Eruption of Anak Krakatoa back in July (Credit: Getty)

The recent seismic activity by the Krakatoa volcano will undoubtedly continue, indeed it is very likely to intensify rather than decline. Because of that the deadly eruptions of this past week are certain to have sequels. The people of Indonesia know very well of dangers that come with living in the most geologically active country on Earth. They can only hope that better detection systems based upon more a more comprehensive understanding of the mechanisms of volcanism will allow them to live safer lives in the shadow of Krakatoa.

Paleontology News for December 2018.

There have been quite a few dino discoveries the past few weeks. I have four stories to cover so let’s get to it.

I’ll start with the discovery of a new species of ‘horned dinosaur’ formally known as a Ceratopsian and related to the well-known Triceratops. The new species, see image below, is named Crittendenceratops krzyzanowskii and is based on the re-evaluation of bones that were discovered almost 20 years ago in 73 million year old rocks southeast of Tucson Arizona. A team of researchers from the New Mexico Museum of Natural History and Science (NMMNH) carried out the re-examination finding “morphological features right away in the material of Crittendenceratops to establish a new species,” according to Sebastian Dalman the team leader.

Artists Impression of Crittendenceratops (Credit: Live Science)

According to the researchers, C krzyzanowskii was approximately 3-4 meters in length and likely weighted 700-800 kilos. The 73 million year age of Crittendenceratops puts it very close to the end Cretaceous period, making it probably one of the last species of ‘horned dinosaur’ to walk the Earth.

One of the big debates going on presently in the paleontological community concerns exactly when it was that the first feathers developed and how many different types of animals had them. Not too many years ago the very idea of a dinosaur having feathers would have been shocking. Now however it is well established that some dinosaurs worn feathers as insulation to help keep them warm. Perhaps even the mighty T rex himself was covered with a warm layer of fuzzy feathers.

Now an analysis of two fossils may push the origins of feathers back another 70 millions years and spread their occurrence to another entire group of extinct reptiles. A team of paleontologists from Nanjing University in China have found what they believe to be short, fuzzy, thread like structures on specimens of pterosaurs, the bat like flying reptiles that lived at the same time as the dinosaurs, but which were not dinosaurs. The fact that many of these thread like structures, see image below, split at their ends in a fashion similar to the development of feathers leads the researchers, lead by Professor Baoyu Jiang, to conclude that they are in fact the earliest fossil evidence of feathers.

Feathers on Pteranodon Fossils. Splitting at the ends indicates they are Feathers rather than Hair (Credit: Michael Benton / Nature Ecology and Evolution)

Pteranodon with Feathers (Credit: Yuan Zhang / Nature Ecology and Evolution)

The spread of feathers 70 million years further backward in time and to another entire group of extinct reptiles not only illustrates how wondrous the past history of life truly is, but also how piece by piece we are slowly uncovering it.

The very first dinosaur specimens to be scientifically described came from the United Kingdom. In fact the very word Dinosaur (Terrible Lizard) was coined by the British naturalist Sir Richard Owen. The paleontology of the UK has been studied for so long, and so thoroughly that you might think that there couldn’t be much left to discover. Erosion can often be a paleontologist’s friend however, revealing treasures that were hidden beneath layers of uninteresting rock.

This is what has happened in the Ashdown Formation in the English county of East Sussex. In the sandstone cliffs along the shore 85 dinosaur footprints have been recently discovered. Not only that but the prints are from as many as 13 different species, giving scientists a glimpse into what the quiet English countryside was like 100-140 million years ago. See image of a print below.

Theropod Dinosaur Footprint from Sussex UK (Credit: University of Cambridge)

The prints include many from well known dinosaurs, the Iguanodon, the Ankylosaurus, a possible Stegosaur as well as several Sauropods and Theropods (Basically that’s all of the dinosaurs you learned about when you were a kid!). Some of the prints are so well preserved that the texture of the animals skin can easily be seen, and therefore studied. See image below. Finds like these give paleontologists a wealth of information about the ecology of the ancient world, showing us how different, and yet how similar the world was so long ago.

Impressions of the Dinosaur’s Skin on Footprint (Credit: University of Cambridge)

My final story today may not be the most important scientifically but it is almost certainly the most spectacular. At least it has the coolest picture, see image below.

Artist’s Impression of a Shark attacking a Pteranodon (Credit: Mark Witton)

Researchers at the Los Angeles County Natural History Museum have been cleaning and preparing a well-preserved skeleton of a Pteranodon, a large species of those flying reptiles I mentioned above. As the researchers were cleaning the area of the fossil’s neck they noticed something stuck in between two vertebra, a shark’s tooth! See image below.

Shark’s Tooth, red arrow, Embedded in the neck of a Pteranodon Fossil (Credit: Stephanie Abramowicz, David Hone, Los Angeles County Natural History Museum)

Now the researchers do not believe that the shark, the tooth identifies it as a species known as Cretoxyrhina mantelli, leapt out of the water in order to attack the Pteranodon in mid flight. Rather they speculate that the flying reptile was floating on the surface of the ocean when the shark ambushed it from below. Even today sharks are known to attack seabirds in this manner, I’ve actually witnessed such an attack myself. So have sharks been feeding for millions of years off of flying animals who are foolish enough think that the ocean is a nice, quiet place to rest for a few minutes? By the way, this fossil Pteranodon was actually discovered back in the 1960s. Another example of how a re-examination can make new finds.

The fossils found by the researchers in California give us a small window into a past event that is both dramatic and fascinating. With each such window we gain a better picture of the history of life on Earth.

An Update on Gun Violence in the USA, the Center for Disease Control (CDC) announces a large increase in Deaths Caused by Guns in 2017.

Back in February I published a two-part post looking at gun violence in the United States and how it compares to that in other countries. (See my posts of 21 and 24 February 2018) Now this last week the Center for Disease Control (CDC) has released their statistics for US gun violence in the year 2017 so I’d like to take a chance to look at the new figures.

Not surprisingly the number of Americans killed grew once again to a total of 39,773, up more than a thousand from 38,658 in 2016. Adjusting for age, in 2017 12 Americans out of every 100,000 died by firearm in 2017 the highest rate since 1979, 40 years ago. In fact if you look at the pie chart shown in the image below you’ll see that the United States had the second highest total of gun related deaths of any nation on Earth, behind only Brazil.

Gun Deaths around the World (Credit: CNN)

Now in a sense comparing total gun deaths isn’t fair since Mexico, Columbia, Venezuela and Guatemala all have smaller populations making their rate of deaths caused by guns much higher. Still, it’s an eerie thought that only six countries account for half of the gun deaths in the entire world, and they’re all in the Western Hemisphere!

Now while I was doing my analysis of gun violence back in February I freely admitted that I was shocked to discover that suicides outnumbered homicides by a wide margin. The data from 2017 continues that trend with 23,854 people killing themselves with a gun as opposed to 15,919 people being killed by someone else. 60% of the total gun deaths are in fact suicides.

If we take a closer look at the demographic breakdown of the suicides in the US, see image below, we quickly discover another shocking fact. The number of suicides among white men, 18,759 is more than three times the number, 5095, for all other demographic groups combined, 79% of the total. Now it is true that white men are a large demographic group here in the US making up 30% of the entire population but that still means that they are killing themselves at almost nine times the rate of the rest of the American population.

Suicides across Demographic Groups (Credit: CNN)

Now taking a look at the breakdown of the homicides, see image below, we find another shocker. Here it is black men who are by far the largest number of victims. Last year 7,661 black men were gunned down compared to 8,258 for all other groups combined, 48% of the total number. In 2017 a black male was approximately six times more likely to be murdered than someone from another demographic group.

Homicides across Demographic Groups (Credit: CNN)

Statistics like these cry out for explanation, demand that somebody do something. The obvious fact that our horribly high rates of suicide and murder are so concentrated in only two demographic groups means that there are social problems unique to those groups. Problems that, if they are found and studied can be reduced if not eliminated entirely. The suicide rate in particular is obviously a mental health issue that begs for a non-political solution.

At the present time however federal agencies like the CDC are legally being prevented from studying gun violence by lawmakers. These so-called leaders are supported by the gun industry and therefore refuse to even consider any sensible approach to reducing gun violence.

First and foremost we need to allow our nation’s best scientific minds to study the problem of gun violence in this country. Only then will we have any chance of giving the people of the United States freedom from gun violence.

A Comprehensive New Study finds that there are massive amounts of Microbial life deep within the interior of the Earth.

We always seem to think of life here on Earth as residing on the surface of our planet. After all life is dependent on the Sun for its energy so even if the depths of the oceans are populated by life certainly living things can’t survive very far below the actual surface of the planet. A new study challenges that idea, finding instead that single celled microbial forms of life live very happily many kilometers deep with the Earth’s interior.

The study is being conducted by the Deep Carbon Observatory (DCO), an international team from 52 counties of geologists, biologists, chemists and physicists. For the last ten years the scientists have been surveying deep mining operations as well as conducting drilling operations in order to get a statistical sample of the amount and kinds of life many kilometers beneath our feet. See image below of the sites worldwide that have been studied by the team.

Sites Around the World Studied by The Deep Carbon Observatory (Credit: DCO)

The DCO used vessels like the Japanese Survey Ship Chikyu to explore life deep UNDER the Oceans (Credit: JAMSTEC)

What they found is astounding, the current estimate of the mass of the life deep inside the Earth is between 245 and 385 times the mass of all the human beings on the surface, all 7 billion of us. More than that, the number of unknown species lying hidden beneath our feet must number in the tens if not hundreds of thousands or more. According to Karen Lloyd, a microbiologist at the University of Tennessee in Knoxville and member of the DCO team the study’s results “force us to reimagine what the boundaries are that life can exist in!” The images below show just a small sample of the kinds of life the team found deep underground.

Microbe Canadidatus Desulforudis found 2.8 km below surface in gold mine near Johannesburg S. Africa (Credit:Greg Wanger)

Methanobacterium found 2km below the Ocean floor off east coast of Japan (Credit: JAMSTEC)

The conditions under which these microbial creatures survive are also amazing. Temperatures as high as 130ºC, that’s 30 degrees above the boiling point of water, acidic sulfur infused water along with pressures 400 times greater than that at sea level, all in the complete absence of oxygen. Is it any wonder that space scientists are interested in the deep carbon study as it gives them so much information about the extreme environments that life can survive, conditions that could mirror those on other planets.

If you’ll allow me however I’m going to take a different tack. Because of course we also know that bacteria and other simple microbial life are all over that potion of the Earth we more naturally consider life’s domain as well. We’ve been told since childhood that almost every surface we touch is covered with bacteria. That’s why we need to wash our hands often. Worse than that, we also know that bacteria are living on our own skin, in our mouths and in our guts.

If fact a recent paper by Doctor Ron Sender of the Weizmann Institute of Science in Israel estimates that while the average human body contains 30 trillion cells it also plays host to an average of 39 trillion bacteria. Now a bacterium is much smaller than a human cell, see image below, but nevertheless Dr. Sender estimates than for a normal adult between 1 and 3 kilos of their body mass is made up of bacterial parasites.

General Human Cell with Bacteria for Comparison (Credit: Dreamstime)

The same is even truer of every animal, every plant we share our world with, to say nothing of all the blue-green algae in all of the world’s pond, lakes and oceans. And every farmer knows that the measure of the fertility of soil is the amount of living bacteria in it. I guess we simply have to face the fact that the world’s single celled microbial life not only greatly outnumber we so-called advanced forms of life, they probably outweigh us by several times as well.

Or to put it another way; two to three billion years ago all of the life on Earth consisted of simple, single celled microbial organisms and things really haven’t changed much since then!

Book Review: Planetfall by Emma Newman.

Emma Newman is a British Fantasy and SF writer and podcaster. Nominated for a British Fantasy Award as best newcomer in 2014 she already has published the urban-fantasy series ‘The Split Worlds’ along with the SF Novels ‘Planetfall’ and ‘Before Atlas’ which was nominated for a Clarke Award in 2017.

Author Emma Newman at a book signing (Credit: Joe’s Geek fest)

The novel ‘Planetfall’ takes place sometime in the not too distant future, in a human colony on a distant, unnamed world some twenty years after the colonist’s arrival, twenty years after planetfall in other words.

The colony was founded by Lee Suh-Mi, a self styled ‘pathfinder’ (Read Messiah) who ‘knew’ that god was waiting on the planet for human beings to come and be with him (her?, it?). Lee Suh-Mi, Suh to her followers, has not been seen since planetfall, she is communing with god in god’s city the colonists have been told. God’s city is an alien structure not far from where the colonists have built their settlement. Here they have been waiting twenty years for the ‘Pathfinder’ to return with god’s message to them.

Renata Ghali, ‘Ren’ is the colony’s manufacturing engineer, that is she takes care of the colony’s 3-D printers that produce everything the colonists require right down to their food. Ren was Suh’s roommate and lover and was present when, back on Earth Suh ate the alien plant that caused her to begin having visions of god.

Not an Alien Plant but it sure looks like one (Credit: Io9-Gizmodo)

Cillian Mackenzie ‘Mack’ is the colony’s leader, who has kept the colonists together even after the disaster at planetfall that led to several of the colony’s members becoming lost and presumed dead. Problem is it’s all a lie and Mack and Ren are the only one’s who know the truth.

Right at the start we learn that Ren is not strong psychologically, she has mother issues and was pretty much dependent on Suh even before they ever left Earth. Now however the strain of keeping the lies is really taking its toll on Ren.

Half the fun of ‘Planetfall’ is trying to figure out just what is going on! What happened back at planetfall and just what are all of Ren’s problems? Author Emma Newman does a very good giving you clues here and there so that, as in a mystery novel, you’re soon caught up trying to put all the pieces together.

I think I did pretty well. I figured out what Ren’s big problem was and the hidden cause of it. I also had a good idea of what had happened at planetfall. The climax at the ending however caught me completely by surprise; I never saw it coming. Writers are often told that you want the climax of your novel to be ‘totally unexpected and completely inevitable’. In ‘Planetfall’ Emma Newman succeeds very well in that goal.

‘Planetfall’ isn’t prefect by any means however. The middle sags a bit as it becomes so dominated by Ren’s mental problems that you lose sight of the main plot. Cutting out maybe ten pages worth of groaning and moaning would be a bit of an improvement. Then at the very end as Ren passes the alien ‘tests’ that Suh failed you can’t quite believe it, she’s been such a neurotic mess the entire novel after all.

I may be a little biased toward liking ‘Planetfall’ because I’ve been working on a novel idea about a group of religious ‘pilgrims’ traveling into outer space in order to pursue their vision of god for a long time. Still ‘Planetfall’ is a well-crafted SF mystery that, once you get started you’ll have to finish in order to not only find out how the story ends, but how it started as well!

After Atlas is Emma Newman’s followup to Planetfall (Credit: Amazon)

Space News for December 2018.

A lot has been happening in space the last few weeks. I’ve got four different stories to talk about so let’s get to it!

I’d like to start with some really good news about the Russian Soyuz spacecraft. You may recall that back on October 11th a manned mission to the International Space Station (ISS) suffered a launch failure when the second stage of the Soyuz rocket failed to properly separate from the first stage. (See my post of 14Oct2018 for the full story) Fortunately the crew escaped without injury.

The Russian space agency Roscosmos quickly went to work and found the problem after only a few days. Just to be certain that the problem had been addressed two unmanned launches were conducted before attempting another manned launch. On December first, less than two months after the launch failure a Soyuz spacecraft carrying three astronauts successfully took off from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan and less than a day later docked at the ISS.

Two Months after a launch failure the Russian Soyuz rockets back to the ISS (Credit: South China Morning Post)

This quick reversal in the fortunes of Soyuz is extremely important of the operation for the ISS because presently the Russian Soyuz is the only launch system capable of taking astronauts to man the ISS. Immediately after the October failure the very real possibility of abandoning the ISS had been seriously discussed. Fortunately the December first launch of Soyuz has made such severe measures unnecessary.

Speaking of the ISS you may have heard about the station’s newest, non-human resident. CIMON the robot (CIMON stands for Crew Interactive Mobile companioN) is an Artificial Intelligence (AI) enabled terminal that is equipped with maneuvering air fans so that it can roam around the ISS and turn so that its video screen face is towards whichever human crewperson it is interacting with. See image of CIMON below.

CIMON and astronaut Gerst aboard the ISS (Credit: CNET)

CIMON is the brainchild of the European Space Agency (ESA) and is currently programmed to act as a ‘companion’ to ESA astronaut Alexander Gerst. Problem is, so far CIMON hasn’t proven to be a very genial companion.

After being delivered to the ISS on 15 November Astronaut Gerst turned on CIMON by saying “Wake up CIMON” to which the robot answered, “What can I do for you?”. Things went downhill pretty quickly from there starting from when Gerst asked CIMON to play his favourite song, “The Man-Machine by the German group Kraftwerk. After CIMON plays the song several times Gerst orders it to stop which the robot refused to do. Instead CIMON responded with comments like “Let’s sing along with those favourite hits”, “I love music you can dance to” and perhaps most disturbingly “Be nice please” and “Don’t you like it here with me?”

After only a short period of testing astronaut Gerst shut down the experimental crewmember and remarked dryly. “CIMON is a little sensitive today.” The robot’s developers actually considered the test a success. After all they wanted CIMON to show some personality, although perhaps not such a contrary one. A second test however is not currently scheduled.

Meanwhile, back at Space X, it seems like I talk about Space X at least every month doesn’t it. Anyway, the California based commercial space corporation has continued its string of space achievements with the third launch and recovery of the first stage of one of its Falcon 9 rockets. In a launch from Vandenberg Air Force Base on the first of December Space X also succeeded in recovering the nose cone fairings, which are put around the rocket’s payload in order to protect it during launch. Those things cost $6 million dollars a set, 10% of the cost of the entire rocket so recovering and reusing those could reduce the price of putting cargo into space even further.

Third Launch of a Space X Falcon 9 first stage. Both the first stage and the Nose Cone Fairings were recovered to be used again (credit: Spaceflight Now)

In another small cost reduction Space X has decided to cease repainting their first stages after a launch. So from now on reused Falcon 9 rockets will look a little singed and snooty before their trips back into space.

Space X did have one disappointment this month. In a different launch from Kennedy Space Center on the US east coast another Falcon 9 rocket successfully sent a Dragon supply capsule to the ISS but controllers were unable to recover the rocket’s first stage. A problem with a fuel pump caused the first stage to land in the waters off Kennedy not far from its intended landing pad. This was the first recovery failure in 26 launches for Space X so in a queer way the failure almost seems like a measure of success.

First stage of a Falcon 9 lands in the water off Kennedy Space Center (Credit: News 13)

For my final story I’m going to go a good bit further out into the Solar System. NASA’s Osiris-Rex probe has been slowly approaching its target of the Asteroid Bennu until on December 4th the spacecraft could reach out with its robotic arm and literally touch the asteroid. You can’t really say that Osiris-Rex landed on Bennu, the gravity of the asteroid is too low.

Close up view of the asteroid Bennu as seen by the Osiris-Rex space probe (Credit: Earth Sky)

In addition to studying Bennu over the next several months, Osiris-Rex will use is robotic arm to collect at least 60 grams of material from the asteroid which is scheduled to be returned to Earth in 2023.

And even as I was writing this post another item of space news happened with the successful launch of China’s Chang’e 4 (or Jade Rabbit in English) lunar probe. The Chang’e 4 is intended to become the first rover on the dark side of the Moon in just about three days. I guess I’ll just have to write a post about it then!

Atlantis, the lost Continent has been discovered once again for about the 100th time in my Life.

A group of adventurers based in the UK has announced the ‘discovery of Atlantis’ in a national park along the Southwest coast of Spain. Hey, it’s outside of the ‘Pillars of Hercules’ (Better know today as the Straights of Gibraltar) and there are some stones there that look like they were worked by humans, so it has to be Atlantis, right? The fact that the ‘adventurers’ are already trying to sell a documentary about their discovery tells you something about their concern for rigorous science.

Now everybody knows that it was the ancient Greek Philosopher Plato who described the ‘Island of Atlas’ in his dialogues Timaeus and Critias in about the year 360 BCE. According to Plato he heard about Atlantis from a Greek Politician named Solon who heard about it himself while on a trip to Egypt almost 300 years earlier. In other words even Plato just heard about Atlantis from a friend who heard it from a friend…and so on.

Atlantis as imagined by Athanasius Kircher in 1664. Notice that north is at the bottom! (Credit: PD)

Most scholars who study Plato, his writings and his times are of the opinion that he created Atlantis as an allegory of a state that grew too rich and powerful and which was destroyed by the Gods for its sin of pride. Except for commenting on Plato’s work, no other Greek or Roman writer mentions Atlantis, Aristotle doesn’t, nor does Herodotus. And none of the ancient Egyptian writings that have ever been discovered and translated ever mention anything like the ancient civilization described by Plato. Aside from Plato no writer of the ancient world, that we know of, gives us any description of Atlantis.

Despite having only hearsay evidence however Plato does give a lot of details about Atlantis. As I said above Atlantis was an island that lay in the waters beyond the Pillars of Hercules, that’s why we call it the Atlantic Ocean after all. Also, the main city of Atlantis was built in three circular rings with canals between each ring and there was an enormous ‘Temple of Poseidon in the very center. See artist’s impression below. As I also mentioned above, the Gods destroyed Atlantis because of its pride some 9,000 years before the time of Plato. Which would put Atlantis back in the time of the Neolithic or new Stone Age.

Atlantis as described by Plato (Credit: John Uebersax)

While nearly all historians and archaeologists discount the existence of Atlantis exactly as described by Plato the possibility that another ancient civilization may have inspired the story of Atlantis has often been seriously considered. Many Bronze Age and Early Iron Age cultures have been proposed as the source of Plato’s tales.

The Bronze age Minoans have often been suggested as the ‘Inspiration’ for Atlantis (Credit: PD)

In my opinion the ancient Minoan civilization that flourished on the Island of Crete and other islands in the Aegean Sea just about 1,000 years before Plato is the best bet. O’k Crete isn’t in the Atlantic but the Minoan’s did possess a vibrant, technologically advanced society which, according to Greek legend, did dominate mainland Greece before the Greek Heroic Age. Also, the Minoan civilization suffered a great devastation from the eruption of the volcano on the island of Thera, modern day Santorini, a destruction which resembles the fate Plato described for Atlantis.

The Volcano Thera on the Isle of Santorini just north of Crete. (Credit: Canadian Museum of History)

Some of the Minoan ruins destroyed by the Volcano Thera (Credit: Santorini)

Still there are those, the pseudo-scientists and psychics who search for an Atlantis exactly as if Plato had visited it and knew it as well as he knew his native Athens. Atlantis has been ‘found’ in the Americas, in the Arctic, the Antarctic. The Nazi’s put it in Germany of course. The search for Atlantis has become a cottage industry. Find some remains of human habitation in a place not normally thought of as an ancient civilization, like southwestern Spain, and you can claim you’ve found Atlantis. Then you can make money off of a book or documentary about your ‘discovery’.

Donana Park in southwestern Spain (Credit: Shutterstock)

Location of Donana Park in Spain (Credit: Inquirer.net)

When searching for Atlantis it’s always a good idea to employ (misinterpret?) the latest technology. The UK group making the latest claim did just that, searching for Atlantis in images taken by the Landsat 5 and Landsat 8 satellites. So the UK group will release a documentary, most of which will consist of a rehash of the ‘history’ what Plato and other people have said about Atlantis. Then a year or two from now somebody else will ‘discover Atlantis’ outside of Toledo Ohio or who knows where and the whole process will begin again.

Meanwhile, real archaeologists are making real discoveries that very few people ever get to hear about. But you will, I promise I’ll write a post about some real archaeology very soon!

Chinese Scientist Claims to have modified the DNA of Twin Human Girls. Has the age of Designer Babies Begun?

On November 26th a major and disturbing announcement was made by a Chinese scientist just two days before the start on an international meeting on Genome Editing was to begin in Hong Kong. In a series of five YouTube Videos Doctor He Jiankui of the Southern University of Science and Technology in Shenzhen China claimed that he had used the gene editing technique known as CRISPR to alter the DNA of two human embryos which had since been born as “healthy” twin girls. According to Dr. He, “Two beautiful Chinese girls, Lulu and Nana, came crying into the world as healthy as any other babies a few weeks ago.”

He Jiankui in his Lab (Credit: VOA News)

The response from the scientific community was an instantaneous and universal condemnation of Dr. He’s actions. Just two days after making this stunning announcement Dr. He spoke at the International Summit on Human Genome Editing and defended his actions but the crisis among scientists in the field of genetic research has only begun and could last for years.

The Second International Summit on Human Genome Editing (Credit: The Royal Society)

So what exactly did Dr. He do and why do so many scientists consider it to be such a violation of ethical conduct?

Well first of all, Dr. He experimented on human beings in secret, without even the knowledge of his own university and against the ethical regulations of his own country. (The Chinese government has joined in the condemnation by the way.) Second, Dr. He experimented using a gene editing technique called CRISPR that is relatively new and still being studied, in other words we still don’t know either how reliable CRISPR is or what possible side effects it may cause. Third, rather than publish his work in a peer reviewed journal so that other experts could study them and comment, or criticize, he announced his “success” in a video intended to draw in other customers for his gene editing business. (Yes! Dr. He appears to actually plan on doing this as a business!) Oh, and just to add insult to injury Dr. He’s video was released only a day after researchers at Southern University of Science and Technology, including Dr. He, had published their own recommended ethical guidelines for genetic experimentation. Guidelines that Dr. He had violated before he ever signed his name to them.

Scientifically what Dr. He did was to take a fertilized human egg cell and use the gene editing technique CRISPR to remove a section of the DNA of the fertilized egg. (SEE my posts of 5Aug2017 and 1Sept18 for more information on CRIPSR) The section of DNA Dr. He chose to remove was a gene known as CCR5. Now scientists know that CCR5 is a gene that codes for a particular protein that the HIV virus uses to enter human cells. In other words Dr. He hopes to make Lulu and Nana immune to the Aids virus by removing CCR5 but there could be two big potential problems with his plan. First, CRIPSR is sometimes known to remove more DNA than is intended so it is very possible that Lulu and Nana have also lost a very important part of their genetic makeup. Also, while CCR5 may be the weak link that HIV uses to attack us, we don’t currently know what benefits we may get from it! Either way there is a completely unknown risk that the experiment may have caused real harm to the girl’s by changing their DNA.

How the HIV Virus enters Cells to cause AIDS (Credit: MIT)

That makes Dr. He’s claim of “healthy” twin girls dubious at best. What if five years from now the girls develop childhood leukemia, or diabetes or any of a thousand other genetic disorders? Even if Dr. He’s experiment didn’t cause the disease, how would we know that and would people believe it? Could governments react to the horror of two sick little girls by eliminating funding for gene editing research if not banning it entirely?

CRISPR holds great promise for exactly the sort of outcome Dr. He is hoping for but the risk of something going wrong at our present level of knowledge simply outweighs the possible gains. Gene editing experiments like those that employ CRISPR need to be carried out a million times with fruit flies and guppies before being tried on humans.

American biologist David Baltimore at the opening of the Second International Summit on Human Genome Editing at the University of Hong Kong, on Tuesday. The Nobel Prize winner has had harsh words for a fellow scientist who claims he has gene-editing human embryo (Credit: WMOT)

Doctor He was allowed to defend his experiment at the Genome Editing Summit but his audience was in no mood to be forgiving. A closing statement signed by all of the organizers of the summit called Dr. He’s actions ‘unexpected and deeply disturbing’ due to ‘inadequate medical indication, a poorly designed study protocol, a failure to meet ethical standards for protecting the welfare of research subjects, and a lack of transparency in the development, review and conduct of the clinical procedures.’ Tough talk for a scientific announcement.

Dr. He defends his Research at the Genome Summit (Credit: BBC)

So it remains to be seen whether Dr. He’s experiment will make him famous, or infamous. The Chinese government has ordered Dr. He and his team to stop all further experiments but the gene-editing genie is out of the bottle. Only time will tell if the birth of the World’s first designer babies pushes the science of gene editing forward, or causes it to crash into a solid wall!